By William Madouk
Deputy Chairperson, also the Secretary of South Sudan Mediation Committee on the Juba Peace Agreement (JPA), challenges Sudanese warring leaders to bring lasting peace.
Dr. Dhieu Mathok said that no outsider could silence guns on the behalf of Sudanese leaders.
Dr. Mathok was speaking at the opening of a two-day consultative meeting between Sudanese government and leaders of Sudanese political parties, in Juba.
“If any outsiders think they can stop the war in Sudan, then they are losers, but you can only be helped through mediation to attain peace, but the fate of silencing the guns is in your hands,” he argued.
Dr. Mathok, South Sudan’s minister of investment, cited the suffering of civilians, saying there is no one who can stop the war more than the Sudanese leaders.
Sudan has been engulfed in bloody chaos since mid-April, when tensions between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the commander of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open war.
However, Sudanese peace talks are expected to resume on Thursday in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah to hammer out the differences.
The talks were suspended in July over fundamental differences between the warring parties.
United Nations humanitarian chief, Griffiths, said the six months’ war in Sudan has killed close to 9,000 people and created worst humanitarian nightmares.
According to the U.N. migration agency, more than 4.5 million people were displaced inside Sudan, while over 1.2 million others sought refuge in neighboring countries.
The fighting also left 25 million people, constituting more than half of the country’s population, in need of humanitarian aid, Griffiths added.
Since the breakout of the war, the cities of Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum North, have become a battleground, with airstrikes and shelling taking place in densely populated areas.
The recent atrocities in Darfur prompted the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to declare in July that he was investigating alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the latest fighting in the region.